Ian Boyne

To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act pre-emptively.

- George Bush, September 20, 2002.

There has been no official announcement, but it's a fact: the Bush Doctrine is dead. Proclaimed with much gusto and cowboy masculinity, the Bush Doctrine, first canonised in September, 2002, declared the right of the U.S. to launch a pre-emptive strike against any nation which it perceives as being a threat to U.S. security interests. Known as the Doctrine of Pre-Emption, Preventive War or Anticipatory Self-Defense, the doctrine proclaimed the right of the U.S. to act even before threats materialise. Unilateralism was at the heart of the doctrine, thus overturning decades of a multilateralist framework which the United States itself had played a pivotal role in fashioning.

But, quietly, the doctrine has been abandoned, not because of intellectual doubts but because it has run up against the crucible of experience. With his Iraq policy in tatters, growing insurgency in Afghanistan, defiance by Iran and North Korea and the failure of 'democracy promotion' to stem the problem of violence in the Middle East, the Bush Doctrine has proven unworkable and impractical.

Dangerous doctrine

Learned foreign policy experts had warned the Bush Administration and its neoconservatives that its doctrine was not only dangerous but dubious as a foreign policy initiative. Now the evidence is in and egg is all over Bush's face. To his credit, he has recognised that the Emperor has no clothes and has quietly sought to find some fig leaves to cover his shame.

"If the rhetoric of the Bush revolution lives on, the revolution itself is over," says Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution in an article titled 'The End of the Bush Revolution', in the July/August issue of the journal, Foreign Affairs. "The question is not whether the President and most of his team hold the basic tenets of the Bush Doctrine - they do - but whether they can sustain it. They cannot," says Gordon in his tightly reasoned article.

Gordon continues: "By over-reaching in Iraq, alienating important allies and allowing the war of terrorism to overshadow all other national priorities, Bush has gotten the United States bogged down in an unsuccessful war, overstretched the military and broken the domestic bank. Washington now lacks the reservoir of international legitimacy, resources and domestic support necessary to pursue other key national interests".

Time magazine, in a cover story in its July 17 issue, proclaims, 'The End of Cowboy Diplomacy: What North Korea, Iraq and Iran teach us about the limits of Going it Alone". The article was blistering. "The shift underway in Bush's foreign policy is bigger and more seismic thanÉ a modulation in tone". Continues the leading US newsmagazine : "In the span of four years, the Administration has been forced to rethink the doctrine with which it hoped to remake the world as the strategy's ineffectiveness is exposed by the very policies it prescribed. Though no one in the White House openly questions Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq, some aides now acknowledge that it has come at a steep cost in military resources, public support and credibility abroad".

The empirical evidence is impatient of debate. The authoritative Pew Global Attitudes Project, which measures international public opinion, has revealed that between 2002 to 2005 the percentage of people with a "favourable opinion" of the United States fell from 72 per cent to 59 per cent in Canada, 63 per cent to 43 per cent in France, 61 per cent to 41 per cent in Germany, 61 per cent to 38 per cent in Indonesia, 61 per cent to 52 per cent in Russia, 30 per cent to 23 per cent in Turkey and 75 per cent to 55 per cent in the United Kingdom.

The percentage of persons who felt that the United States took their countries' interests into account when acting was also alarming: Only 19 per cent in Canada, 18 per cent in France, 38 per cent in Germany 17 per cent in Jordan (A US ally), 19 per cent in Spain, 14 per cent in Turkey and 32 per cent in the United Kingdom. US international credibility is very low and this has been one of the factors which have helped to force moderation on the cowboy diplomacy of the Bush Administration.

Popularity

Bush's own personal popularity has also declined significantly. And his foreign policy is widely perceived in the United States as being an abysmal failure. By early 2006, 55% of Americans surveyed said the decision to invade Iraq was not "worth it". More Americans felt that "Americans should mind their own business" than at any time since Vietnam. Indicating a stunning scepticism of the Bush emphasis on democracy promotion and "spreading liberty around the world", only 20% of those polled felt that spreading democracy to other countries was a "very important goal" for US foreign policy.

If the Bush Administration is concerned about perceptions, then it would be severely disturbed by the July/August issue of another leading foreign policy journal, Foreign Policy. In an article on "the terrorism index", we read the results of a poll done among more than 100 of America's top foreign policy experts. Foreign Policy teamed up with the Centre for American Progress for this project and polled Democrats and Republicans alike. The news is worrying for the Bushies.

"The index results show striking consensus across political party lines. A bipartisan majority (84 per cent) of the index's experts say the United States is not winning the war on terror. Eighty-six percent of the index's experts see a world today that is growing more dangerous for Americans. More than eight in 10 expect an attack on the scale of 9/11 within a decade". A glum perception and forecast on the eve of September 11 anniversary.

Agreement

Foreign Policy quotes the well-known foreign policy expert Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the influential Council on Foreign Relations, as saying, "Foreign policy experts have never been in so much agreement about an administration's performance abroad. The reason is that it's clear to nearly all that Bush and his team has had a totally unrealistic view of what they can accomplish with military force and threats of force". Bush's foreign policy has been an unmitigated failure and it's a good thing that the administration has come to its senses about some of its illusions of grandeur.

Interestingly enough, Bush first came to office with a humble, restrained view of foreign policy and , in fact, was critical of the activist foreign policy of Bill Clinton. He promised to concentrate on domestic issues and to make Latin America the focus of his foreign policy attention, not the Middle East or other hot spots of the world. Candidate Bush spoke out strongly against the notion that "Our military is the answer to every difficult foreign policy situation-a substitute for strategy. Yes,, George W. Bush did say that!

September 11 changed all of that and threw him in a panic and at the mercy of the neocons, who had been waiting for the opportunity to implement their Project for A New American Century. September 11 provided the perfect opportunity for them to use hysteria to push their unilateralist vision of the world. Bush was susceptible, and not having firm ideas of his own, he succumbed to the intellectuals.

The neocons relied on raw military power more than they did on diplomacy and the power of ideas. The noted Harvard scholar Joseph Nye warned them about the consequences of neglecting what he called " soft power", but they were in no mood for the complications of reason, intoxicated as they were by America's sole-superpower status. But the over 100 foreign policy experts from both parties have rebuffed the Administration: "To win the battle of ideasÉ the experts say America must place a much higher emphasis on its nonmilitary tools. More than two-thirds say US policymakers must strengthen the United Nations and other multilateral institutions".(Foreign Policy)

Bitter experience

Bitter experience has forced the Bush Administration to draw closer to the once-maligned United Nations. With the current issue over Iran's nuclear weapons programme, notice how the US has effectively worked with the UN to deal with Iran, rather than making unilateralist threats or proclaiming its Bush Doctrine of Pre-emption. The US will not nuke Iran. The US has learnt from Iraq. It's a humbler US today because of the brunt of experience. The US is learning that despite its unparalleled military and naval power, it cannot go it alone and it needs allies. Better late than never.

When North Korea launched its missiles, provocatively on American Independence Day, July 4, President Bush, rather than reacting with the usual Bush Administration muscular rhetoric and apocalyptic language, pledged to "make sure we work with our friends and alliesÉ to continue to send a unified message" to Pyongyang. In the Press conference following the North Korea provocation, Bush referred to diplomacy more than six times. The Bush Doctrine is dead, killed by a virus called Reality.

Even though Bush had formerly denounced Clinton's 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea and had refused to negotiate with enemies, the Administration in September last year accepted an arrangement with North Korea that would have provided that dictatorship with energy aid, security guarantees and gradual normalisation of relations in exchange for that country's abandoning its nuclear weapons programes.This was a major turnaround. Though the initiative eventually failed, the fact of Bush's willingness to make the proposal was significant.

In March this year the Bush Administration announced that it would open dialogue with Teheran about Iraq, "a dramatic departure from its earlier insistence that such a step would legitimise the Iranian regime," says Gordon in his Foreign Affairs piece. The administration had formerly criticised European engagement with Iran but when in late 2005 Iran threatened to break off the negotiations with the Europeans, the United States itself insisted that the issue go to the UN Security Council. What we are seeing is the US taking a more multilateralist approach, effectively burying the Bush Doctrine.

"The Bush Administration has been forced by reality to work more closely with allies and to set aside the doctrine of regime change by military intervention", says Gordon in "The End of the Bush Revolution".

As religious ideologies have found painfully, so the Bush Administration has found that experience is a potent foil to ideological blindness.

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. Email ianboyne1@yahoo.com.